


Visitation Rights

by FoxGlade



Series: #hashtag 'verse [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: #coulsonlives, Gen, Not Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Compliant, Self-Esteem Issues, Tony Stark's Collection of Reasonable People, pre-slash like woah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-08
Updated: 2014-04-09
Packaged: 2018-01-18 14:48:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1432405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FoxGlade/pseuds/FoxGlade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[WINTER SOLDIER SPOILERS]</p><p>"In any case, Steve’s especially glad of Bucky’s progress when it becomes apparent that Pepper’s visit had sent out a ‘Welcome All’ signal, because it was after Movie Night that the visits started."</p><p>Stark Tower is slowly becoming a hostel for superheroes, ex-assassins, and their various cling-ons. Steve is pretty sure Tony didn't think this through.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> two things:
> 
> 1\. CONCERNING SHIPS: i got a review on a crosspost of this fic complaining about a pairing i didn't mean to imply, so im stating it now: pairings in this series are steve/bucky, clint/coulson, thor/jane, and pepper/tony/bruce. none of these will ever be explicit, and that last one will most likely never be more than vaguely implied.
> 
> 2\. at a con i went to recently i finally bought the first Hawkeye volume, so Kate Bishop and Lucky are definitely things in this series. no knowledge of the comic is required to read this fic or any fic in this series, however.

If the first official Avengers Movie Night was when Steve left the damn metaphorical bridge behind him, the weeks following it made him forget it ever existed.

Bucky improved in leaps and bounds. The times he spends lost in thought and memory (or lack thereof) diminish into seconds, rather than minutes or hours, and the time between them stretches further each time. Movie Night marks the end of Bucky’s second week in the tower, and when Steve thinks of how much he’s recovered so quickly he wants to weep with gratitude.

Except then Bucky would catch him at it and knock their shoulders together while calling him a punk, and he’d probably end up crying too, which would be horrible for everyone involved. So Steve satisfies himself with thankful prayers and more lessons on snack foods with Clint, so he can leave treats out for his housemates.

In any case, he’s especially glad of Bucky’s progress when it becomes apparent that Pepper’s visit had sent out a ‘Welcome All’ signal, because it was after Movie Night that the visits started.

\---

In a stunning display of subtlety, Thor arrives at the tower in civilian dress, via taxi cab, rather than in full armour and trailing after his hammer through the sky.

“My friends!” he booms, grinning hugely as he grabs Clint, who is closest to the door and hadn’t the sense to move in time. “It is good to see you! It is long since we last looked upon each other, although I believe it has been longer for myself than for you all here. My lady Jane has been studying the difference of time between realms - when I returned to Midgard last week, I-”

“You’ve been on Earth for a week and didn’t come to us?” Tony interrupts, affronted. “Didn’t happen to take a look at the news in that week, did you?”

“I have been slightly occupied,” Thor replies. He seems slightly sheepish. “My lady Jane-”

“Ah, say no more,” Tony says with a wink. “But speaking of occupied, come meet our latest Lost Boy!”

Bucky steps forward from where he’d been standing slightly behind Steve and carefully holds out his non-metal hand. “Bucky Barnes,” he says, barely wincing at the strength of the god’s handshake. Maybe he should have held out the metal arm. “It’s good to meet you.”

“And I you, friend Barnes!” Thor replies. Steve is reminded strongly of an exuberant golden retriever making a new friend, and has to stifle a burst of hysterical laughter at the image of Thor licking Bucky’s face in excitement. “Are you to join our band of heroes, or do you live here with one of my shieldfellows? I myself have brought my lovely Jane to dwell here, along with her bosom friend Darcy.”

Tony’s “Wait _what_ ” clashes with Clint’s cry of “Hell yes Darcy!”. Bucky ignores them both. “Guess I’m just living here with Steve for now,” he says with a shrug. “Maybe I can audition for your boyband in a month or two.” He gestures with his metal arm so that the light winks off of it. “This has to come in handy sometime, right?” Someone snickers at the pun and is soundly ignored. “And hell, you need at least one _proper_ sniper to make up for Robin Hood over there.”

“My weapons are state of the goddamned art, Barnes,” Clint says. “You wanna go? My arrows against your bullets, lets see who wins.”

“It’s been real fun around here Thor,” Steve interrupts with an amused smile. He steps up next to Bucky to shake Thor’s hand and gets pulled into a hug that even _he_ finds rib-cracking. “You’ll fit right in,” he chokes out.

“That is good to hear,” Thor says as he lets Steve escape from the bear hug. Uncharacteristically, he hesitates and looks around - Bucky and Clint have drawn Tony into their weapons argument, Natasha and Bruce are still talking quietly in the kitchen where they had slipped away until Thor’s enthusiasm had reached more manageable levels - then asks Steve, “I do not wish for Jane to be unhappy here. She is not among those the mortals deem ‘superheroes’, and although I assure her she is equal to all here, she remains cautious. Tell me; does she have reason to worry? Has Barnes been treated in any distasteful ways as he stays here with you?”

Steve takes a moment to mentally reflect on the time Bucky has lived here. It seems like more than two weeks. “I can’t tell you the full story right now,” he says finally, “but Bucky’s been treated with nothing but respect and friendship. Your girl Jane is a scientist, yeah? Tony and Bruce will love her, and the rest of us will love her because _you_ love her. And apparently Clint’s already acquainted with her friend, so she’ll be just as fine. Probably.”

Thor grins. “Thank you, Captain, for your assurance,” he says, moving to pull him into another hug. Steve dodges out of the way.

“No problem, really, no need to thank me,” he says hastily. “Say, do you want to see Natasha and Bruce? They’re in the kitchen.”

“Indeed!” And with that he moves his overwhelming and undeniably godly presence towards his unsuspecting teammates.

Bucky, Clint and Tony’s argument is still in full swing, although now it’s moved on to flinging insults at which part of America they each grew up in. Steve leans against the wall opposite them and smiles fondly. It’s good to have a team again.

“Uh, hi, excuse me?” a voice says next to his shoulder. He jumps and spins to face this new intruder - and aborts to motion to grab his shield off his back, it’s not even _on_ his back, it’s fifteen feet away in his bedroom because why would he carry his shield around the common room? A dark haired woman with wide eyes is staring back at him from the doorway, and Steve tries to relax.

“Hi. You must be Doctor Foster,” he says, shaking her hand. She looks faintly shellshocked.

“Yes. Yes! Of course I am. It’s just Jane, though, really,” she replies.

“Sorry about scaring you just then,” Steve says sheepishly. Jane waves her hands sharply.

“No no no, my fault, should know better than to sneak up on soldier’s, right? Although I’d expected your super-hearing to pick me up, but I guess you were distracted. It is pretty loud in here, I mean, Thor is here, of course it is,” she babbles. Steve gets the instinctual feeling that she is going to become very good friends with Bruce.

“He’s in the kitchen, talking to someone I think you’ll love to meet,” he says with a smile. “But, uh, Thor said you were bringing a friend? Did you get separated? I can go find her, if you-”

“Right here, Captain,” another dark haired woman says happily, sliding into the doorway to stand next to Jane. “Just looking at all the fancy Stark tech on the way up. Think he can build me a better iPod?”

“Darcy!” Clint crows from across the room. “Baby Momma number two!”

“ _What_ ,” Natasha says from the kitchen.

\---

Thor is, surprisingly, an ideal roommate. He spends entire days wandering the city, unlimited MetroCard in hand. He comes back with cheesy souvenirs for Jane and Darcy and, on occasion, his teammates. Bucky in particular is confused when Thor silently enters the common room at 5:30pm one day, when he and Steve (and, whenever he can stand to be away from his lab, Bruce) avidly watch the news of the day. Without a word, Thor hands Bucky a sort of snowglobe, and walks away with a solemn look. Bucky gives Steve an ‘is this guy for real?’ look and shakes the globe, causing little plastic starfish to fall over the tropical island inside. They don’t say anything aloud, but Steve notices him repeatedly shaking it and staring at the gently falling objects with a calm expression the next time he lapses out of reality for a minute.

He wonders how Thor got a reputation for “pretty but dumb” when he’s so sharply observant.

Jane, as predicted by Steve, gets along fabulously with Bruce. In a bout of 3am restlessness one morning, Steve wonders into the kitchen to grab something to eat, and finds the two of them sitting on the counter next to the stove, hands curled around mugs of tea and quietly discussing not science, as Steve would have guessed, but relationships.

“I don’t worry about him,” Jane says softly, “except, well, I do. I know he’s near invincible, logically, but…”

“Illogically, you worry every time he gets hit,” Bruce finished. “You wonder if this is going to be the hit that makes him falter, the one that really hurts. That one that gets to him.”

“Yes. Yes, exactly,” she says. She takes a sip of her tea and huffs. “And, I don’t want him to _stop_ saving the world and doing all these wonderful things, but at the same time, I just want him to be _safe_.”

“Don’t we all,” Bruce mumbles, staring into his tea, and his tone is so sad that Steve steps out of hearing range before he can explain.

It makes him feel guilty when he slips back in beside Bucky, who still hasn’t thought to ask for a separate room or bed, remembering the thread of excitement in Bucky’s voice when he’d told Thor about “auditioning” for the Avengers, and how much his heart had paradoxically lightened and sank at it. Lightened, because hearing Bucky get excited about something, anything, just proved how far he’d come since he’d curled up on the street outside Stark Tower and waited for Steve. But his heart had still sank, because…

“I just want to keep you safe,” he whispers to the pale blur of Bucky’s face, inches away in the darkness. He didn’t twitch in his sleep, like he might have done seventy years ago, and Steve feels his throat thicken. “Can’t I be selfish just this once, and keep you safe?”

No answer comes, and Steve falls back into an uneasy sleep until dawn.

So Jane’s easy companionship with Bruce isn’t surprising, but the ease with which she gets along with _Tony_ definitely is. Steve had been thinking that it took a certain kind of person to handle being around Tony for extended periods of time; self-assured, in-control people like Pepper and Natasha, who could rein him in with a few sharp words, or thoroughly reasonable, relaxed people, like Bruce and Tony’s buddy on the Air Force, Rhodey. Even quick-witted Clint and Thor with his ability to laugh anything off, or indeed himself with his stubbornness, seemed like ideal housemates for their eccentric host.

Jane was none of these things, and yet she and Tony got on almost as well as Tony and Bruce.

“It’s a science thing, don’t bother trying to understand,” Darcy had said the first time Steve had wandered into the common room to find Jane, Tony and Bruce all speaking simultaneously, gesturing wildly and making the Excited Science Noise at regular intervals. “They’ve been doing this for like, half an hour. I’m waiting until they collapse so I can watch Hardcore Pawn.”

Darcy and Clint had apparently met back when Thor first arrived on Earth, before Steve was woken up.

“She’s like the incredibly annoying little sister that I never wanted, but now that I have her, I may as well have fun with,” Clint explains as he adds the last ingredient to the marinade and shoves it in the fridge. “Yeah, we’re making dinner with that tomorrow, it’s time for a pizza night,” he says to Steve’s confused look.

All things as they are, the latest arrivals survive the first five days in the tower, and Tony calls another Movie Night in celebration.

“Aren’t these things supposed to happen on the same day every week?” Natasha asks, clearly amused.

“That’s boring, who made that rule? Although let’s not start on rules again,” Tony says hastily, “except to say that last week’s rules still apply, so don’t forget those snacks, Girl on Fire!”

“That supposed to be an insult, Stark? Katniss Everdeen is badass,” Clint replies. Jane, Darcy, Bruce and Thor nod in agreement.

“She’s the one in that film with the bird, right?” Bucky asks Steve.

So for the second Stark Tower Movie Night, Thor drags a mattress into the common room from one of the spare bedrooms and dumps it in front of the 3-seater couch. Unlike last time, the room fills up long before the official start time, Jane squashed between Tony and Bruce on the loveseat and arguing enthusiastically about which Hollywood studio has the worst scientific advisors. Thor and Darcy are playing an explosive game of Snap on the mattress (not literally explosive, thankfully) with Natasha watching intently, and as usual, Clint is putting Steve to work making movie snacks. Bucky is leaning against the wall next to the fridge, calling out unhelpful advice and stealing food whenever he can.

“If you take one more bit of apricot, I’ll break your arm,” Clint says, only half joking. Bucky just waves his metal arm and uses it to steal another bit.

Despite this, and the fact that Clint kept checking his phone and muttering at regular intervals, they manage to get all the snacks out just before Tony yells for JARVIS to dim the lights and start the movie. Clint settles in his armchair clutching the bowl of caramel popcorn and checks his phone again, while Steve and Bucky collapse against each other on the right end of the couch.

“Put your phone away, Barton, it’s family time,” Tony says, stealing a kale chip right out of Bruce’s fingers and throwing it at Clint. Clint bats it away without looking.

“He’s late, and I haven’t got a text saying why,” he mutters.

“Another visitor! Who have you invited to our sacred Movie Night?” Thor asks from the mattress, just as the door to the common room swings open and Agent Coulson walks in.

“Sorry I’m late,” he says with an embarrassed smile. “Traffic.” He nods at Natasha and grabs a handful of popcorn from the bowl Clint’s been protecting.

“It’s a bitch,” Clint agrees, then finally seems to notice their gaping expressions. Well, except for Bucky, who just seems confused as to why everyone else is confused. “Oh, yeah, sorry I didn’t tell you guys he was coming over. Got distracted. Can we start the movie again?”

“You’re dead, you are most definitely dead,” Tony says. Coulson frowns.

“I know we don’t get on that well Stark, but I didn’t think you wanted me dead,” he replies evenly, sitting on the arm of Clint’s chair and picking another handful of popcorn. Tony flails his hands wildly and Jane ducks out of the way.

“On the Helicarrier!” he insists. “Loki! Avenged!”

Coulson gives him a strange look, then glances between Clint and Natasha. “Do they not know I survived?” he asks. Steve feels his eyes widen as his confusion worsens.

Clint winces and Natasha looks embarrassed. “I thought they already knew,” she admits. “Steve is level seven, at least, and Stark’s was in SHIELD systems since New York, so I figured between the two of them…”

“Why do I keep finding out these things from places other than my incredibly intelligent hacking system?” Tony yells. “Also, why am I Stark but he’s Steve?”

“She likes him more than you,” Clint says. “Sorry guys, I honestly thought you all knew.”

“Perhaps you could explain the circumstances which led to the Son of Coul standing before us, and not dead by my brother’s hand,” Thor rumbles dangerously. Jane and Darcy inch away from him as static electricity starts to build in the room.

“Complicated things,” Coulson states, calm as - well, calm as a highly competent agent in a room full of superheroes and genius-level scientists. “A lot of technology went into bringing me back. Luckily, I was too good an asset to SHIELD for them to let me go. After I was revived, I was picked to lead a team of agents in dealing with small-scale emergencies involving superpowered individuals.” He grimaces and continues, “After SHIELD’s destruction, it took a while to wrap up our ongoing investigations, but now we have to figure out how to proceed without SHIELD overseeing us.”

Everyone in the room ponders this. Bucky still looks confused, so Steve whispers, “I’ll explain it to you later,” to Bucky’s apparent relief.

“So you knew he was alive this whole time?” Darcy asks Natasha and Clint. They shrug.

“Of course,” Clint says, holding up his phone. “We’ve been texting. Thank god for the SHIELD phone plan, right?” He frowns suddenly. “Wait, who’s paying my phone bill now? Aw, hell.”

“If that’s all sorted, can we start the movie, please?” Coulson says, shrugging out of his jacket and tossing it carelessly on the floor. “I love the Hunger Games."

“Of course, Agent Coulson,” JARVIS replies, and even he sounds a bit dazed.

"Oh, and it's good to meet you, Mr. Barnes," Coulson adds, reaching over to shake hands with Bucky.

"Just Bucky," he replies automatically. "And likewise, I'm sure."

A brief struggle ensues on the armchair which ends in Coulson sitting comfortably and Clint on the ground leaning against his legs, his own tangled with Darcy’s on the mattress. Tony opens his mouth to make a comment, but Bruce leans across Jane to shake his head pointedly. Tony sulks, and Steve ignores them all to focus on the dramatic opening panning out onscreen.

\---

The morning after Coulson arrives, Steve finishes his morning jog and rides the elevator up to the common floor to find Clint cooking his excellent French toast, Coulson sitting at the table wearing an Army Ranger shirt that fits him very well (and something in Steve’s brain with a realisation that, in hindsight, should have been obvious last night), and a teenage girl feeding leftover apricot balls to a one-eyed dog.

“Morning,” he says, because he is nothing if not adaptable. Clint and Coulson nod, and the teenager gives him an assessing look.

“Hey, Cap, meet mini-me,” Clint says, waving a spatula at the teenager. “Captain America, this is Hawkeye. Kate Bishop, this is Steve Rogers. Also, pizza dog.”

“Good to meet you,” she says, and stands. “So, deal with your damn building already, Clint, I’ve got things to do. Can’t keep running your things and feeding your dog for you.”

“You love pizza dog,” Clint says, but he’s nodding. “Go on, get to daycare, or whatever nine year-olds do all day.”

She salutes him with a grin and lopes out the door, winking at Steve as she goes.

“That girl is a menace,” Clint says, flipping another piece of toast onto a plate and shoving it at Steve. “God, I love her.”

“You said she’s Hawkeye?” Steve asks. “How old is she, really?”

“Older than Spiderman,” Clint says with a shrug. “Don’t worry about her, Cap, she’s as good with a bow as I am. Better, on a good day. She takes over Hawkeye duty when I’m unavailable.”

“Sounds like a good find,” Steve says. Pizza dog has wandered over, completely bypassing Coulson to sniff at Steve’s fingers. Steve scratches behind his ears and his tail thumps on the floor. “Did SHIELD pick her up?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Well, if she’s Hawkeye too, you should invite her to our next Movie Night,” Steve suggests. Pizza dog whines and Steve continues to scratch him. Clint snorts and turns off the stove, picking up another plate of toast and dumping it on the table in front of Coulson.

“Good to see someone likes Lucky around here,” he says, nodding to the dog. Steve feels momentarily relieved that the dog’s name isn’t actually pizza dog. “Coulson’s allergic.”

“It’s not like I don’t like dogs,” Coulson argues through a mouthful of French toast. He swallows and continues, “I just can’t touch them. Or be around them. Or be where a dog has been within the last 24 hours.”

“You’re doing all right now,” Steve says, giving Lucky one last pat on the head before shooing him off to sit at Clint’s feet. Coulson’s nose twitches.

“Allergy medication,” he grumbles. “I have to take it whenever I see Clint now, he’s covered in dog hair more often than not.”

“Lucky’s just naturally exciteable, not my fault he’s always jumping on me,” Clint says with a sad look.

Coulson points his fork at him and shoots back, “That look hasn’t worked on me in seven years, so don’t try it now. And I told you, I don’t care, as long as you don’t try bringing the mutt into our bedroom.” Clint grins and shrugs in a way that broadcasts the phrase “it was worth a shot”.

It’s almost as if Steve is seeing an entirely different Coulson to the one who looked at him with respect and admiration bordering on hero-worship, who was both smooth and awkward in conversation. He prefers this Coulson, who grumbles about allergy medication and throws his suit jackets on the floor to get crumpled and talks with food in his mouth. Maybe he has changed since he “died”; Steve didn’t know him well enough back then to recognise any changes now. But maybe this is just how he is at 7am, sitting in the kitchen with a newspaper and his - boyfriend? partner? Steve remembers Tony’s comment about in-laws and chokes on his toast a little.

Whatever it is, Steve enjoys it, so he stays in the kitchen feeding scraps to Lucky as one by one, the rest of the team filter in or breeze through on their way to start the day.


	2. Chapter 2

Steve values his early morning jogs and his sunrises spent on the roof with Bucky for the same reasons: it’s quiet and peaceful in these times, and they give him time to think and reflect. On his jogs, everything turns into a blur of motion and early traffic noise and, sometimes, the jazzy music Tony had put on his new phone. His worries blank out, focusing him only on what he needs to think about. At dawn on the roof, it’s the challenge of sketching in the grey, fuzzy pre-dawn light, drawing New York’s new skyline and Bucky’s profile and, if it’s a good day, Peggy’s eyes and Howard’s smirk, all from memory. The last time he drew those last two, though, the slowly gathering sunlight revealed that he’d confused the shape of Peggy’s eyes with Natasha’s, and Howard’s face had looked too much like Tony’s to be recognisable. He hadn’t tried since.

Sometimes he feels guilty for being grateful each time he wakes to get dressed for a jog and Bucky only sighs in his sleep, not waking up. He’s started to twitch in his sleep again; nothing like the restless leg jerks that would keep Steve up in the orphanage, or the tossing and turning on hard ground during their time in the Commandos, but far enough from the deathly stillness he slept in those first two weeks that it makes Steve smile every time he feels it. In a similar vein, they’re not sleeping pressed together like they did right up until Bucky left for the army, but these days he’s near enough for comfort; every night he sleeps on his back, shuffled just close enough to Steve to rest his forehead against Steve’s wrist, or press their freezing toes together, or grab hold of Steve’s shirt with a tight fist, if he can feel it’ll be a bad night.

So Steve is grateful for Bucky’s newfound habit of sleeping in and not screaming through his nightmares for hours on end, of course. But he’s also grateful that these things mean he can go out on his jog and not spend the morning hour on the roof sketching ghosts, and then he feels irrationally guilty for that gratitude, even though it’s not as if he’s grateful for Bucky’s absence. He’d like that, actually; a chance to run through New York with his best guy at his side, the same sort of silence shared between them on their rooftop mornings, but coupled with the type of action they both thrive on.

He rolls out of bed on an overcast Tuesday and winces when the movement disturbs Bucky, who’d been resting two fingers on Steve’s arm in his sleep. He waits for Bucky to mutter and settle back down, but instead he stretches, eyes fluttering open and humming. “Heya, Steve,” he says, voice sleep-rough. “Goin’ for a jog?”

“We can go up on the roof,” Steve says quietly. Bucky sits up and stretches again, hair falling over his face as he leans forward. Steve had offered to cut it soon after he’d arrived, but Bucky had refused, muttering something and wandering off. Steve hadn’t asked again.

“Not today,” Bucky says. “Do you mind if I run with you? I’ve been knocking about this tower for weeks; about time I got out, yeah?”

They don exercise clothes, grabbing fresh sweatpants and tees and slipping them on without self-consciousness, and start their run minutes later. Bucky had pulled on a baggy sweatshirt of Steve’s which almost completely covered his metal arm, ensuring that the only looks they get from fellow joggers are purely familiar greetings, from the ones Steve’s run into before, or appreciative, from newer ones. After one particularly enthusiastic jogger nearly runs into a pole because he can’t take his eyes off Steve (who laughs and salutes the guy as he runs off with a grin and red cheeks), Bucky rolls his eyes and shoves him a little.

“Nice to know you’re as irresistible to the fellas as you are to the ladies,” he says, only panting a little. It was irritating him how much muscle he’d lost on three weeks of minimal exercise, Steve could tell.

“Strange world we woke up in, Buck,” he replies, slowing down fractionally. “But it is nice, yeah.”

“Nice that you’re getting attention from guys?” Bucky asks, waggling his eyebrows ridiculously. Steve laughs so hard that he has to stop and leans against a mailbox.

“As nice as getting attention from dames, I guess,” he says finally, still smiling. “I just mean, it’s nice that guys _can_ flirt with other guys, in public, and folks are more likely to think it’s normal and fine than not.”

Bucky stares at him for a few moments. Before Steve can worry about him blanking out again, or reacting less than positively to what Steve had said, he smiles back at Steve and says, “Guess it is nice.”

They move on, joking and laughing as they jog at a much slower pace than before. It isn’t like his normal silent morning treks; it’s better, actually, and they keep moving through the city for another half hour, long after Steve normally turns around to go back to the tower.

“We’re almost at the Bridge,” he says eventually, when they can see the pylons peaking over the buildings. “Want to go into Brooklyn? There’s this great café in the Heights, I’ve been there once or twice.”

Bucky jogs beside him in silence, and for the second time this morning Steve worries if he’s accidentally brought on another lapse out of reality. Maybe Bucky isn’t ready to go back to their old neighbourhood? He probably shouldn’t be out at all, really, they should just-

“Sounds good,” Bucky replies, and the only tone in his voice is interest. “They do pie? Haven’t had a good slice of pie in… well, seventy years, give or take.”

\---

They hang around the front door of the café for around twenty minutes, smiling sheepishly at the owner when she arrives to open business at 7am, then lounge in the squishy purple armchairs while the coffee brews. Clint would probably like this place, Steve thinks as Bucky tears into an orange and poppyseed muffin.

Watching customers come through is enjoyable on his own, but ten times better with Bucky, it turns out. He mutters commentary in Steve’s ear about the harried business men buying the largest size coffees available and sweet talks every woman who comes within polite speaking distance. Steve inhales an entire mouthful of coffee in shock when Bucky tries the same thing on a man their age, dressed in casual business clothes.

“Flattered, but no thanks, buddy,” the man laughs over Steve’s frantic coughing, cheese and spinach quiche swinging from his hand in its delicate paper bag as he walks off.

“What was that?” Steve wheezes, still trying to clear coffee from his windpipe. Bucky thumps him on the back a few times.

“You know how much stuff I charmed off girls right after we left the orphanage?” he says. “I figure, if fellas flirting with fellas is fine and dandy these days, may as well learn to use it. ‘Specially considering how expensive things are, in current time,” he adds, waving the receipt for their breakfast.

“That’s terrible, Bucky,” Steve says, but he’s laughing at the same time. Trust Bucky Barnes to see something that would’ve gotten them killed as teenagers as just another tool to use. “And you have to admit, the food may be more expensive, but it’s a hell of a lot better to eat.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Bucky says, flashing his teeth and taking another swig of coffee.

They stay in the chairs for another half hour or so, chatting to anyone who sits down and taking their time with the coffee, before waving goodbye to the owner behind the counter and setting off again, this time at a walk rather than a jog. Cars bustle on their way to work and the city is well and truly awake, air ripe with voices and the smell of the city that’s changed so much. It’s not the Brooklyn they knew, but walking the streets with Bucky at his side, joking about stopping in at the War Memorial, wondering if they should go through Chinatown and grab some dumplings for Bruce, who has a not at all secret love of them; it all just feels _right_.

“On your left!” a familiar voice calls, breaking him out of his thoughts, and he swings around to grin hugely at the approaching figure.

“Sam, what are you doing here?” he asks, pulling him in by the hand for a quick hug.

“Looking for you, funnily enough,” Sam replies, then looks at Bucky and freezes. “Uh.”

Bucky’s gone still as well, eyes downcast and glazed, and Steve knows he’s gone for the moment. “It’s a long story,” he says hurriedly to Sam, “but don’t worry, okay? He’s not – he’s okay now. Mostly. Hey,” he continues when Bucky starts blinking again. “Bucky, this is Sam Wilson. You’ve, uh, met before.”

“Yeah, I think I remember a little of it,” Bucky says vaguely, shaking Sam’s hand. “Did I really rip the steering wheel out of your car? Sorry.”

“It’s fine, man,” Sam replies warily. “I’m guessing this is one hell of a long story?”

Steve takes in the still-hazy look on Bucky’s face, the tension in Sam’s shoulders, and makes a snap decision. “We’re on our way back to the tower, you could walk with us?” he suggests. The walking will shake Bucky out of his confusion and give Sam to relax, he’s sure. “I’ll tell you the whole story at the place, but you can tell me why you came looking for me on the way.”

“ _Stark_ tower?” Sam asks incredulously. “You even need to ask if I wanna go there?”

“Is that a yes?”

It turns out to be a good call. After establishing that Sam only wanted to catch up and see how he was coping, Bucky sets up a hesitant conversation with Sam that quickly builds speed. By the time they reach Stark tower, Sam’s quizzing Bucky on the properties of his metal arm, his initial cautiousness disappearing entirely as soon as Bucky says, “I don’t know, but it comes in _handy_ every now and then.”

“You ever gonna let Stark get a hold of it?” Sam asks. “Dude’s a genius, bet he’d have some upgrades in mind.”

“Hell no,” Bucky snorts. “He’d probably paint in red and gold and make it capable of flight.”

“You wouldn’t want that?” Steve says sceptically. Bucky shrugs.

“Red’s not really my colour,” he replies simply.

Clint’s poking at an omelette that looks stuffed to bursting in the kitchen when they pile out of the elevator, Bucky and Sam now chatting about Sam’s flight capabilities. Steve leaves them to it and goes to perch on the counter, as seems to be the ritual for anyone in the kitchen who isn’t cooking.

“Where’s ours?” he says, mock hurt. The omelette pops in the pan and Clint pats it gently with a spatula, making hilariously serious soothing noises.

“Phil’s leaving tonight,” he says after a moment. Bucky straightens from his elegant slouch against the fridge, listening in, and Sam mimics him seemingly automatically. “Had his downtime, figured out what to do without SHIELD on their-“ He stops and spins in place, pointing the spatula at Sam. “Okay, why is Falcon in our kitchen?”

“You’re Hawkeye, right?” Sam asks, and grabs Clint’s other hand to shake it. “Man, have I heard a lot about your habit of jumping off buildings.”

“Ditto to you, buddy,” Clint returns. To Steve’s questioning noise and Bucky’s confused look he explains, “We’ve never met, but you hear things through the inter-agency grapevine. People seem to think birds of a feather flock together, so I hear what he does every now and then, and vice versa, I assume.”

“But don’t ask who I heard it from, because normally you’d be way above my clearance,” Sam adds. Clint snorts and shakes his head.

“Gossip has no clearance,” he agrees, then flips the omelette out of the pan and onto a plate. “Put that into the oven real quick,” he says, handing the plate to Steve, who does as instructed. “He was up until damn near 2am finishing the paperwork for that team of his, since he has to register them with about fifty-fucking-other alphabet agencies now that SHIELD’s – well, you know – so he won’t be conscious for at least another fifteen minutes.”

“Surely it’s impossible for Super-Agent Coulson to stay in bed past 0900 hours,” Bucky jokes, as if he doesn’t regularly wake up at 10am.

“You’d think so, right? But okay, this one time in-“

“Please don’t tell them about Belarus,” the now-familiar sound of Coulson’s gravel-scratch morning voice says, the man himself ambling out of the elevator and towards the kitchen. He pauses and looks from Sam’s amused face to the plate full of omelette that Clint’s quickly pulled out of the oven, and chooses the omelette. “That was a trying time for us all, and Mr Wilson doesn’t have the clearance for it.”

“Gossip has no clearance,” Clint sings, obnoxiously loud. “You were dead to the world half an hour ago, can I blamed for thinking you’d pull a repeat of Belarus?”

“Technically I’m still dead to the world,” Coulson says, so deadpan that Steve laughs.

“I feel like I’m missing a lot here. How long do I have to stay before I’m as crazy as them?” Sam asks Bucky in a low, amused tone.

“Clearly longer than I have,” Bucky murmurs back, but the grin he flashes at Steve says otherwise.

\---

The answer to Sam’s question seems to be about half a day, given that Tony shows up in the kitchen with questions soon after they arrive and, upon being told about Sam’s old wings, kidnaps him down to the workshop.

“You remember the specs, right?” Tony says, grip on Sam’s arm unrelenting as he literally drags him away. “Of course you do, military man you are, just tell JARVIS the specs and I can start replicating them. _Improving_ them, even, you think I can’t do better than whoever the hell designed them? Why would you say that to me Sammy, I thought we were buddies.”

 _Help me_ , Sam mouths just before the doors close, laughter crinkling the corners of his eyes.

Four hours later, just as Steve’s starting to wonder if they shouldn’t go check that Sam’s still alive, Tony reappears, talking excitedly with Sam and, surprisingly, Jane, about how much potential Tony can cram into his new design for the wings.

“Didn’t know that was your thing,” Steve says when Jane breaks off to grab some juice from the fridge. She hums and brushes her hair out of her eyes distractedly.

“Well, I built a lot of my equipment from scratch, and cannibalised a lot of other machinery to get parts,” she replies. “Not my thing like it’s Stark’s thing, but I still think it’s pretty fun.”

“Sure looks fun,” Steve agrees, raising his eyebrows as Tony finishes a basic sketch of some blueprints and Sam makes noise that sounds damn near to an Excited Science Noise. “We got another housemate, you think?”

“Your call, Captain, you were the one who brought him here,” Jane says with a shrug. “But I think he said he was staying over the river in Jersey City, and came out here for the day.”

“We probably have enough people living here for now,” Steve admits. Jane gives him a clear “you think?” look and sips her juice, right before Bucky points out a flaw in Tony’s blueprints and another round of frantic sketching takes place.

The drafting and planning of Sam’s new set of wings stays in the common room long after Bucky gets bored of watching and pulls Steve away to go spar in the basement gym. They seem to be the only ones disinterested in the show, however, since by the time they’re both showered and in fresh clothes, damn near every resident of the tower has gathered in the living room. Thor is leaning on the back of the loveseat Tony and Sam have commandeered and asking Jane questions about the design of the wings, mournfully shaking his head and speaking of how such a thing would be so much easier with Asgard’s far more advanced technology. Tony is alternatingly taking offense at the insinuation and interrogating him on just how far advanced their tech is. Natasha, Bruce and Darcy are all seated on the mattress that still hasn’t been removed, playing something that looks like a complicated version of Snap. Steve does a quick headcount and frowns.

“Hey, folks, pretty sure we can’t call a Movie Night unless the whole team’s here,” he says, sitting on the end of the couch that Natasha usually claims for herself, so as to be closer to the main cluster of people. “Where’s Clint and Coulson?”

“Since Agent’s shipping out in around three hours, probably something none of us want to think about,” Tony says, fingers dancing on the tablet. “There, is that near enough to your _advanced technology_ , Pikachu? But that’s not a bad idea, Cap, it’s been, what, five days since the last Movie Night? Definitely enough time. JARVIS, remind me to remind you to order pizza tonight, we can watch bad romance movies and laugh at Barton when he cries. Falcon, you in?”

“Sorry, I’ve got places to be tonight,” Sam says, apparently now used to Tony’s rapidfire topic changes. “I’ll take a raincheck, though.”

“We’ll make an Avenger out of you yet,” Tony says smugly. It’s not as bad an idea as most of Tony’s others, Steve thinks briefly, just as Darcy brings her hand down on a particularly large pile of cards with a crow of triumph that mingles with Natasha and Bruce’s frustrated and inarticulate cries of anger.

\---

There’s a feeling of _déjà_ vu when Steve slips out of his room at 3am the next morning, intent on a cold drink to soothe his restless insomnia, and hears a murmured conversation coming from the kitchen. Against his better judgement, he creeps down the hallway and leans against the wall just before the corner.

“So I don’t get to meet your latest additions to the Reasonable People Collection?” he hears a voice say. It has a slight static to it, and Steve realises that it’s a phone call, placed on speaker.

“Not for a while, Rhodey,” Tony says. He sounds tired. It’s a shock; Steve’s not sure he’s heard or seen Tony give in to his body’s demands for sleep even minutely since he arrived here. He peeks around the corner.

Tony’s standing by the sink, slumped against the bench with his eyes closed. There’s no phone on the bench, so Steve assumes JARVIS is relaying the call through his outputs. “Have to make sure I don’t run them off before I introduce the missus, right?”

Rhodey, with the stubborn patience Steve had admired on the few occasions they’d met, ignores the joke and says, “You’re not going to run them off, Tony. They like you.”

“Yeah, I just…” Tony breathes out hard and rubs his face with his hand.

“Is Bruce still there?” The worry embedded in Rhodey’s otherwise calm tone is giving Steve a sinking feeling in his stomach; the same feeling he would get when Bucky would trail off in the middle of conversation, those early days, eyes blank and mouth turned down in confusion.

“Fell asleep on the couch, I promised to make his stupid tea for him.” Tony pauses. “I don’t know how to make tea.”

“Bruce won’t leave if you don’t make him tea, Tony.”

“He might,” Tony argues, but he’s too tired for it to have any heat.

“Bruce isn’t leaving, and neither is Pepper,” Rhodey says. His voice is so assuring that Steve almost finds himself nodding along. “Neither am I, for that matter. Or Clint, or Steve, or anyone else.” The sound of his name makes Steve jump guiltily, reminding him that this is a private conversation, not meant for his ears.

“Yeah.” There’s a long silence, and then, to Steve’s horror, a sniff. “Sorry, you shouldn’t have to deal with this, it must be late over there-“

“Not as late as it is there. And I want to deal with this, Tony,” Rhodey says gently. There’s a sigh, then, “I want you to talk to Bruce about this.”

“He’s not that kind of doctor,” Tony says immediately. “And really, he has better things to do, now that he has a proper lab again he’s really-“

“Talk to him,” Rhodey interrupts again, voice firmer this time. “Not tonight, but… please, Tony, I just want you to be okay.”

“I am okay,” Tony mumbles.

“Get some sleep, talk in the morning. The actual morning.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

Steve steps back into his bedroom, suddenly bone-tired. Bucky stirs a little when Steve slips in beside him, murmuring and turning his head towards Steve. The unsure scratch of Tony’s voice and the weariness and wariness in his eyes are haunting him, the feeling in his stomach that he’d thought had left with Bucky’s screaming nightmares back in full force. When the feeling solidifies into something resembling grief or maybe nausea (or maybe both), he disregards the boundaries he imposed on himself weeks ago and throws an arm around Bucky’s waist, shuffling until their foreheads are nearly pressed together. He focuses on the steady sound of Bucky’s breathing, willing the feeling away.

Bucky shifts, turning towards him just a fraction more, and murmurs, “Steve…”

He sleeps peacefully, long past the time he normally heads out for his jog, and when he finally stumbles into the living room to find Tony asleep, facedown and snoring into an equally unconscious Bruce’s chest, the leaden feeling in his gut is nothing more than a memory.

“You’re up late,” Clint says quietly from the kitchen. “And you look awfully chipper. Do I want to ask why?”

Steve thinks of the way Bucky had murmured his name in his sleep, how he’d woken up with Bucky’s hand resting over his. He thinks of the way Tony has been desperately bringing them all together and keeping them, not like action figures in glass cases, but more like a man adrift clinging to wreckage to stay afloat – and then thinks of Pepper’s indulgent affection, Bruce’s poorly concealed delight in Tony’s attention, Rhodey’s unending patience and kindness. He thinks of all the ways that the broken people in this tower fit together, and how they’re fixing each other and themselves everyday.

“I’m feeling good today,” he says simply.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this marks the end of the (vaguely) plot directed fics in this series. i've got a few more fics planned for this 'verse though (and a recipe book, if anyone else is interested in the recipes clint teaches steve), so watch this space.


End file.
